The Four Fundamental Principles of Bioethics: Their Need and Relevance for Today

Before formulating any comprehensive or common understanding for the moral arguments that have been surrounding the end of life decisions for terminally ill patients. The world has been forced to witness, make decisions and care or leave the sick to die on their own. Ethical decisions and conduct have torn the world between reality and theory.

The world turning into a medical warzone as the Covid-19 pandemic causing catastrophic dilemmas witnessing the unprecedented number of critical patients that are requiring urgent treatment. The ethical questioning of whom should be provided with treatment or who should be left out has never been questioned as much as today. The calamity has left medical workers, patients and their families in a deep and harrowing sense of dysphoria. The ripples of dire suffering of physical, emotional and mental have been felt in almost all parts of the world. The current situation has induced humanity to act in ways that they would have never believed themselves to behave in.

In these critical times, an infected human being is negated due to the uncertainties that surround the virus as it threatens a contagion outbreak leading to the fear of death.

In these unchartered waters, medical personals have been reduced to observers wherein they are learning and trying with great intensity to be as moral as possible. The need for the principles of bioethics has never been felt as acutely as today. 

Let us get an understanding of the principles of bioethics in the event of treating patients – autonomy, allocation of resources and justifying actions.